Hi everyone,
I joined the lis recently. Although I seem to have timed it with an influx of other newcomers unlike them I didn't read the New Scientist article!
I'm currently teaching myself stats (or reteaching myself stats). One thing that has intrigued me as I work through my old Business Stats book is the relative absence of any cultural, political or sociological context to the computation of stats - as if the numbers don't really mean anything. This is, perhaps, best exemplified in a very old but very influential text in managemnet by F.W. Taylor in which he says something like he fired 7/8ths of a workforce of 73 people. A simple stat but whenever I ask students to interpret it very few wonder precisely how it is possible to fire a percentage of a person. They just think that it sounds like agood think to be able to cut your labour costs by 7/8ths!
So, I look forward to getting stuck into to the mailing list.
Robert
******************************************************
Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your
message will go only to the sender of this message.
If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's
'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically
to [log in to unmask]
Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk.
*******************************************************
|